The Articles of Organization

For a very long time STF has been without a single, central document that we can call "the Law." For years this was not a problem; any time a member approached the "wrong side" of STF standard, an older member could tell him what the tradition was. Nowadays, however, with the membership of the WeBB increasing all the time and a much lower ratio of older officers to new ones, I feel that it's high time STF got around to codifying its laws.

There are only three earlier attempts that I know of to do this: The first is the original STF Constitution, which has been lost to the winds of time; the second and third are constitutions written by myself and former President Randy McCullick in 1996, both of which are hopelessly out of date now, and were never ratified in the first place anyway.

Some Notes on This Document

• Article I was written in a much more familiar tone than any other article. This is becuase Article I is meant to be better-read by the "majority" of STF -- it deals with the day-to-day business of Roleplaying, as opposed to other sections about promotions, elections, and other nonfrequent events.
• In this document all of the pronouns are male. This has nothing to do with my personal feelings at all but everything to do with the fact that in the English language, the male pronoun speaks for both; thus, when I say "he" in reference to the President, it's not that I don't believe in female Presidents, it's simply that there is no "neuter" pronoun of that sort in English.
• Included in this document are two sets of notes to clarify the language. Underneath some paragraphs are in-document notes set in small-font italics. In the future, I will link some paragraphs to out-of-document papers explaining why certain measures were adopted, and how certain powers were designed to be used. Neither of these notes are considered part of the "A of O" proper.
• Please also note that I have used the adjective "constitutional" to mean "pertaining to this document," instead of "articlerian," which I'm not sure is even a word. In any event, people are more used to "constitutional" in such things as "constitutional law" and "unconstitutional," so for any language nazis out there, that's my explanation.
• The word "Ship" means different things in different places. In articles I, III, IV, and V, it means "area in which serious, in-context RPing takes place." This includes most RPing ships and starbases. In article II, however, it means "area in which serious, in-context RPing takes place that is RPed as a ship operated by Starfleet." The term "Starbase" is used in article II to include colonial outposts, planetary garrisons, and orbital/deep space stations. We apologize for any confusion this causes.